PAINTS AND STAINS

Almost every kind of surface, from drywall to concrete, needs protection from the elements. These harmful elements can range between raging blizzards to innocent looking sunlight on a living room wall. The total thickness of the paint that eventually ends up on the exterior of your house is usually about one tenth the thickness of your own skin, and interior paint is even thinner. We ask a great deal of that coating of skin. What it can do will depend on a variety of factors, like the quality and brand of paint or stain, and exactly how well the areas are prepared and painted.

Paint and stain should be durable, resisting fading and abrasion and allowing repeated washings. Interior paint should go on with reduced spattering. A quality interior stain or clear coating should resist fading, peeling, or yellowing, and also be easy to maintain, free from impurities or waxes that could collect dirty residue and make cleaning or recoating difficult. Outside paints should dry with a toughness that resists deterioration from all types of exposure, and an elasticity which provides for constantly expanding and contracting walls. With their deep penetration and level of resistance to ultraviolet (UV) light, the stains and finishes on your home's outdoor surfaces should give a similar high performance.

Historical Development of Paint and Stain

The oldest known paint was used by the painters of Lascaux, who ground natural pigments with water and a binder that might have been honey, starch, or gum. You may be wondering why these cave paintings have lasted a large number of years as the paint on the south part of your property is peeling after only three winters. Here's why: The frequent mild temperature, humidity, and dark interiors of caves are ideal preservatives. Your house, on the other hand, is exposed to all kinds of weather and conditions.

The Egyptians knew as soon as 1000 B.C. that paint could protect as well as decorate. Beeswax, vegetable oils, and gum arabic were heated and mixed with Earth and vegetable dyes to paint images that have lasted a large number of years. The Egyptians used asphalt and pitch to preserve their paintings. The Romans later used white lead pigment, making a formula that could exist almost unchanged until 1950.

The Chinese used oil from the Tung tree to cement the Great Wall, and also to preserve wood. The Chinese used gums and resins to make sophisticated varnishes such as, shellac, turpentine, copal, and mastic. The formulas and applications for those varnishes also evolved little in the following centuries.

Milk paint goes back to Egyptian times, was widely used up until the late 1800’s when oil-based paints were introduced. Odorless and non-toxic, milk paint today is being revived as an excellent interior paint. Cassein, the protein in milk, dries very level and hard, and can be tinted with other pigments. Like stains, milk paint should be covered with a wax or varnish, and is very durable.

Fashioned from hogs' bristles, badger and goat hair, brushes also evolved little for several centuries. Bristles were hand bound, rosined, and greased, then hand laced in to the stock of the brush. Hog's hair brushes, called China bristle brushes, remain a preferred brush for oil-based paints.

Pigments originally originated from whatever bore a color, from ground up Egyptian mummies to street mud. Most mineral or inorganic pigments came from rust, potassium, sea salt, sulphur, alum (aluminum), and gypsum, among others. Some extravagant works incorporated precious stones such as lapis lazuli. Hundreds of organic pigments from plants, insects, and animals comprised the rest of the painter's palette.

Paints and stains changed little from the time of the Pharaohs to the Industrial Revolution. A book on varnishes publicized in 1773 was reprinted 14 times until 1900, with only minimal revisions. However, the colder climates of northern Europe have brought about the need for more lasting paint, and in the 1500s the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck developed oil-based paint.

Starting in the Middle Ages lead, arsenic, mercury, and different acids were used as binders and color enhancers. These and other metals made the mixing and painting process dangerous. Paints and varnishes were usually blended on site, where a ground pigment was mixed with lead, oil, and solvents over sustained high heat. The maladies that arose from poisonous exposure were common among painters at least until the late 1800s, when paint companies commenced to batch ready mixed coatings. While contact with poisons given off through the mixing process subsided, contact with the harmful ingredients inherent in paints and stains didn't change much until the 1960s, when companies ceased making lead based paints.

World War I forced the U.S. painting industry to modernize. Manufacturers had to discover a alternative to the natural pigments and dyes that originated from Germany. They commenced to synthesize dyes. Today many pigments and dyes are chemically synthesized.

Innovations in the painting industry have extended well beyond pigments. Water-based latexes have gained in attractiveness as a safe, quality option to oil-based paints. Latexes have changed from simple "whitewashes" to highly advanced coatings that can outlast oil-based products. Both oil-based and latex coatings are emerging annually with notable improvements, such as the ground metal or glass that's now added to reflect destroying UV light.

A milestone in the evolution of coatings occurred in the very early 1990s with the introduction of a new category of paints and stains known as "water borne." Created by the need to adhere to stricter regulations, water borne coatings decrease the volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, within standard paint and stains. Dangerous and flammable, VOCs evaporate as a coating's solvent dries. They could be inhaled or assimilated through the skin, and create ozone pollution when subjected to sunlight.

THE MAKE UP OF STAINS AND PAINTS

Paints and stains contain four basic types of materials: solvents, binders, pigments, and additives.

Paint and Stain Solvents and Binders

Solvents will be the vehicle or medium, for the elements in a paint or stain. They regulate how fast a coating dries and exactly how it hardens. Water and alcohol are the primary solvents in latex. Oil-based solvents range from mineral spirits (thinner) to alcohols and xylene, to napthas. The solvent also includes binders, which form the "skin" when the paint dries. Binders give paint adhesion and sturdiness. The cost of paint is based in large part upon the quality of its binder.

Because water is the vehicle in latex paint, it dries quickly, enabling recoating the same day. The odor that you see when using a latex paint or stain is the "flashing," or evaporation, of the binder and solvents. The binders in latex are minute, suspended beads of acrylic or vinyl acrylic that "weld" as the paint dries. Latex enamels contain a higher amount of acrylic resins for greater hardness and durability.

Alkyds and oil-based paints are basically the same thing. The term alkyd comes from "alcid," a combo of alcohol and acid that acts as the drying agent. Both have the same binders, which might include linseed, soy, or Tung oils. Oil based and alkyd enamels may contain polyurethanes and epoxies for extra hardness. Alkyd paints come in high performance combinations such as two part polyester-epoxy for industrial use and a urethane revised alkyd for home use. Urethane boosts strength.

Water borne coatings use a two part drying system: water is the drying agent, and oils form a hard-drying resin. These new coatings match and sometimes out perform their oil-based cousins. They resist yellowing, are stronger, require only water clean-up, have little odor, and are non-flammable. One disadvantage: They raise hardwood grain and require sanding between coats.

Stain and Paint Pigments

Pigments will be the costliest component in paint. In addition to providing color, pigments also impact paint's hiding power - its capability to protect an identical color with as few coats as you possibly can. Titanium dioxide is the principal and most expensive ingredient in pigment. Top quality paints not only have more titanium dioxide, but also more finely ground pigment. Inexpensive paints use coarsely ground pigment, which doesn't bind well and washes off more easily.

Additives

Additives determine how well a paint contacts, or wets, the surface. In addition they help paint flow, level, dry, and resist mildew. Oil is the surfactant, or wetting agent, in oil-based paint. These paints have a natural thickness and potential to flow and level; they go on smoother than latex and dry more slowly, so brush stridations have a chance to smooth out. That's why oil-based paints tend to run on vertical surfaces more than latexes do.

Latex paint has been playing catch up with oil-based paint over the years. Today many latexes outperform oil-based paints and primers, thanks to thickeners, wetting agents (soapy substances that are also called surfactants), drying inhibitors, defoamers, fungicides, and coalescents. Defoamers keep latex paint from bubbling and leaving pinpricks (called "pin holing") in the paint as it dries. Bubbling is triggered when the soap wetting agent rises to the top as it dries. The better the paint, the less pin holing you will have. It used to be that if latex paint was shaken at the paint store you would have to let it to settle for a few hours. This really is no longer the case with better paints, that can be opened up and used right from the shaker without danger of pin holing.

Coalescents help latex resins bond, especially in colder weather. Oil-based paint, because it dries slowly and resists freezing, can adhere and dry in temps from 50°F to 120°F. With added coalescents and, believe it or not, antifreeze, some latexes can be employed in the same temperature range, and even lower. Some outdoor latexes can be safely applied at temperature at only 35°F. Companies including Pratt & Lambert, Pittsburgh Paint, and Sherwin Williams have removed the surfactants to help their latex paints be applied in lower conditions. As the wetting agents have been removed, the latex dries faster.

UV blocking chemicals have been added to paints and stains to help slow the aging process. Sunlight is responsible for much of the breakdown of any covering. It fades colors, dries paint, and adds to the expansion and contraction process that makes paint crack and peel off. UV blockers in paint may contain finely ground metals and ground glass which is now being added for even greater reflection of natural sunlight.

If you are in a region with lots of humidity, rainfall, and insects, you may need to consider adding a biocide or fungicide to your paint. Biocide deters insects, and fungicide counters mildew. Many coatings already contain some fungicide, but only in small concentrations because of strict interstate regulations.

Sound Quality Painting

824 90th Dr SE suite B

Lake Stevens WA 98258

(425) 512-7400

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